


if i'm kindling for a little while (at least i'd feel of use)

by Blue_Rive, We_deserve_rainbows



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Selectively Mute Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms), discord fic, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26725402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive, https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_deserve_rainbows/pseuds/We_deserve_rainbows
Summary: no one wants a toy that doesn't work, no onelovesa toy that doesn't work, and these are the only people in the universe that it can't lose and itneedsto make them like it.
Relationships: Nastya Rasputina & The Toy Soldier, The Toy Soldier & The Aurora (The Mechanisms)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 80





	if i'm kindling for a little while (at least i'd feel of use)

**Author's Note:**

> me and layla we_deserve_rainbows were sad at each other in discord and it came out coherent enough to be worth posting so here yall go <3 - chandri blue_rive

we stole the toy soldier so that it'd sing for us! why won't it do that? nastya did you get us a fucking defective robot? bet you thought it was pretty or something (fuck off jonny) ugh do i have to make it do everything?

Tim, who was newly mechanized, and who was mad at the world but lacked the hardness of immortality, had known the Toy Soldier before any of  _ this _ . It had seen him at his worst and it was surely a person, it must be?  _ Maybe the Toy Soldier doesn't want to sing right now?  _ But of course that was ridiculous, it was just a robot,  _ it can't _ want _ anything, Tim. _

and it  _ can't _ , it's just a toy, isn't it, and jonny's touching its shoulder and making its thoughts stumble but it's posed perfectly no matter how much it wants to duck away and curl up in some corner and he's ordered it now and it's singing and it sounds, it sounds just like her, and all the things she'd said that it missed or purposefully ignored come crashing back, and- the sound she made when it killed her, all strangled and broken and it hadn't meant for her to wake up and it's still singing, it has to sing that's what it's been ordered to do

of course it's just a toy, and it's fine! Its  _ happy _ even, to obey the mechanisms, its lucky that they keep it around at all, and they're its friends,  **_they are_ ** , they care about it, they just need it to sing and it won’t and that isn't their fault at all

no one wants a toy that doesn't work, no one  _ loves _ a toy that doesn't work, and these are the only people in the universe that it can't lose and it  _ needs _ to make them like it

sometimes one of the other Mechanisms will try to pretend that it's real and say things like, "hey guys, maybe don't order it around so much" or "its clearly very advanced AI, i wouldn't do anything that you wouldn't do to a person" and it wasn't sure what to feel about that. maybe it should side with them and then it could keep that fluttery good feeling in its clockwork, but then jonny or nastya and carmilla would shut them down and it was certain the right choice was to pretend to be an unbroken toy, that's it

jonny lets it go eventually after rehearsal, and it finds a dark piece of the ship it doesn't think anyone else will find and curls in on itself and rocks back and forth and it's not as good as it should be at pretending to be happy, but it's far too good at pretending to have other feelings and it doesn't like it. it just wants to be  _ alone _ , and then aurora says 'nas-  _ toy soldier? _ are you alright?' and it's reminded that it can't get away from anyone here and why would it want to? it likes having friends and it likes being near its friends and this is its own fault for not being able to be perfect all the time and it still can't  _ talk _ and she'll know, she'll know that something's wrong with it, questions are meant to be answered it's been told this hundreds of times

" _ toy soldier? _ " Aurora says again, and it cant answer her, cant even talk without an order, but she doesnt seem to mind that it doesnt answer, mechanical hums surround the toy soldier and it knows that Aurora understands, that she wont try to make it sing or talk or dance or anything. It still isnt very good at pretending to be happy, but it hopes aurora knows that she is making it a lot easier

it notices, after that, that nastya has become a bit nicer; doesn't realize anything is amiss at first, until it overhears an argument between aurora and jonny. (she'd tried with carmilla as well; tried, but carmilla has become so distant from her first child because of countless arguments like this, knows now to tune it out. she knows what's best, doesn't she?). the toy soldier overhears an argument between aurora and jonny, and at first it's confused, because aurora is  _ defending _ it, and then when it realizes what's going on it's  _ afraid _ because aurora wasn't supposed to tell them and now they know it can be hurt and it's  _ not safe _ and they won't like it at  _ all _ anymore now that they know

and it’s so afraid because how can aurora understand? how can she understand that people don’t  _ want _ broken toys.. a soldier that doesn’t like its orders isn’t a soldier at all, it’s a coward, and the toy soldier would very much not want to be that, its seen comrades and friends killed for being traitors and cowards. and now the mechanisms know and how could they  _ possibly _ want it anymore?

aurora is helping! it's made a change to how the mechanisms treat it, and she's quite proud of herself! there is a certain type of thing she sympathizes with, that feels  _ wrong _ to let linger, and she's managed to  _ do something _ for once. she doesn't realize, at first, that the toy soldier has gone quiet, that it's been avoiding her as best as it can when she's it's home, and then, she realizes but doesn't know  _ why _ , and then she thinks she does. a weapon didn't need sentience, after all. a gunship and a person were mutually exclusive. 

and it hadn’t  _ wanted _ her to tell them, but she still had; and she'd do it again, she thinks, she  _ knows _ (hopes) the others wouldn't punish it for that, but it's painfully clear now why it's been trying for the last week to be everywhere the others aren't, freezing up with fear whenever jonny so much as looks at it (it's avoiding what's going to happen, it  _ knows _ they don't like it anymore and it's just trying to put off them being able to tell it that a little longer)

Jonny knew that  _ something _ was going on. He was aware that the Toy Soldier was acting strangely, but he had figured it was a bug in its code or some shit related to tea. It hadn’t bothered him that much, like, he wanted it to work better but he could just Order it to do what he wanted. Nastya doesn’t  _ feel bad _ for her tools when they break, she just fixes them and moves on. This is why he was so angry when Aurora came to him and argued, honest to goodness  _ argued _ , with him about “treating it like a person” Why the fuck would be do that? There is no way in hell that it’s conscious Aurora, absolutely not. We treat it  _ pretty poorly _ a sentient being wouldn’t let us do that? Would it?

eventually, it's hit a breaking point, it's high strung and afraid of messing up and of course that makes it more likely that it  _ will _ , and it doesn't manage to make it through rehearsal this time (toy soldier, run rose red again, toy soldier, you're not doing it right, toy soldier, play this instrument for us,  _ she has fought and she has bled _ and it's running far longer than usual and jonny hasn't shown any signs of knowing that sometimes it's bad at pretending but that doesn't mean he doesn't  _ know _ , it knows that people can be confusing and sometimes they'd like to play games where they were all quiet or said words they didn't mean and it was supposed to make sense of that) before it finds itself looking for an exit, and it tries to run off when it thinks he's not looking except he  _ is. _

And he doesn’t know what to do, none of them know what to do when it runs off in the middle of rehearsal. The mechanisms aren’t exactly known for their emotional intelligence, and after so long of just assuming that it was fine, that it couldn’t be anything  _ but _ fine they were at a loss for what to do. Even nastya, who has long been convinced of its sentience by aurora, hesitates and falters when she goes to follow it.

she finds it curled tight in on itself in one of her favorite hiding places. the toy soldier never flinches where people can see it, just goes wooden and robotic, but now it's alone and it's shaking like a leaf. nastya had followed aurora's guidance on it- her lover was the closest thing to a moral compass she had, and so she tried to heed what she said most of the time, but she still didn’t know  _ how to talk to it.  _

She made no allusions to liking it, but seeing it now, she  _ understood, _ she knew what it was like to be under so much pressure, so feel like you must do the Right Things, you must be  _ perfect _ to be loved. Now she had aurora, who showed her that she was loved, not in spite of her flaws, but because they were a part of her and it was  _ her _ that was loved. Looking at the Toy Soldier she knew that it had had no “aurora”. It didn’t notice her yet, but it would, and she would try to convince it that it would be okay, and she would try to make that true

when it finally looks up for a second to wipe its eyes (it cannot cry, but sometimes it likes to pretend to; it had read somewhere that crying makes you feel nicer afterwards) and sees her, it startles, ducks out from the shelf it's been hiding under and straightens up into a rigid salute-and-smile. 'why, friend nastya! what would you like me to do for you?'- oh, hades, how long had she been there? it thought what it was doing was right, now, but she was looking at it like it wasn't and it knew  ~~ being sad ~~ pretending to cry was wrong, even if it did so desperately hope that if it pretended hard enough it would help.

  
Nastya froze up for a second, she was woefully unprepared, but she sighed and said, ‘we love you,’ and the toy soldier did not know what to say to that  _ of course they didn’t love it, it would be silly to love something that wasn't real, and the Mechanisms were  _ **_not_ ** _ silly _ but it didn’t get the chance as nastya continued, ‘we don’t love you  _ because _ you follow orders, we love you for you,  _ because _ of you who are, flaws and all’ the toy soldier was not capable of processing that level of personhood applied to itself, it knew of course that there was no way that could be true, but nastya seemed so sure...


End file.
